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UNITED NATIONS: The United States and Japan on Wednesday handed a UN panel lists of North Korean entities targeted for sanctions in response to Pyongyang's recent long-range rocket launch, a Turkish diplomat said.
"We have received communications from two countries, the United States and Japan," said Baki Ilkin, Turkey's ambassador to the United Nations, after chairing the first meeting of the UN Security Council's sanctions panel on North Korea.
The panel met to work out which entities would be targeted by the financial sanctions slapped on North Korea in 2006 following the country's nuclear and missile tests.
It was established under council Resolution 1718 of October 2006, which barred the Stalinist state from conducting any missile-related activities.
But the panel was not activated until Monday, when the Security Council unanimously adopted a statement condemning the April 5 North Korean rocket launch and tightening existing travel and financial sanctions against Pyongyang.
Ilkin said Wednesday's meeting was the first of a series of consultations the panel had planned and that new lists of entities might be presented by other delegations.
Diplomats said the US side submitted a list of 11 North Korean entities involved in proscribed missile-related activities, while Japan put forward a list of at least 15 entities.
They said the sanctions committee was tasked with reconciling the two lists.
Meanwhile, UN inspectors earlier removed seals at North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear facility, a day after Pyongyang vowed to restart its nuclear weapons programme in response to UN condemnation of its rocket launch.
The inspectors have also switched off surveillance equipment at the site and are preparing to leave the country, a diplomat close to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said.
The Yongbyon complex produced weapons-grade plutonium until it was shut down under a six-nation nuclear disarmament deal.
Incensed by the Security Council's condemnation of its April 5 blast-off, Pyongyang pledged on Tuesday never to rejoin the six-party talks. It vowed to restore and reopen Yongbyon and to reprocess spent reactor fuel rods.
The IAEA said then that North Korea was ceasing all cooperation with the UN watchdog and had asked its inspectors to leave the country as soon as possible.
The six-party talks involve the United States, China, Japan, Russia and the two Koreas. - AFP/de
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